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KURT had grown up with two parents who were far too deeply in love with one another.
They were always laughing, always touching in some way, and every sentence between them seemed to end with a great, big heart mark.
He could remember watching his mother spoon food into his father’s mouth, thinking, even as he was just old enough to gum his first mushy baby meal, that it’d be quicker if the man just fed himself.
“They were a bit much for me as a child,” he said.
“I think they sound like a lovely couple,” came Sophie’s reply.
In most households, the child brought warmth to the family.
But at the Ozhorn’s, warmth was always in surplus, leaving Kurt with no such job to do. He always stood quietly apart, watching his parents and their happiness, cool, inert, and distant.
This was the shape of his life until the age of fifteen, when it was discovered that he held an exceptional affinity for light magic. Not the common sort, either—his aptitude was rare, refined enough to secure him a place among the royal healers.
He had imagined that life would change then. That being in such a place, reserved for the most brilliant, would finally lift the boredom that had followed him like a shadow, but that was not to be.
The healer’s camp was much the same. The same kinds of people. Ordinary, slow-moving, unexceptional. They struggled with things he grasped in minutes. Concepts that required no more than a glance for him seemed to take them days. He tried, at first, to help them understand. To speak, to clarify. But his words were often met with wounded looks, confusion, or quiet disdain. And over time, they stopped listening. And he, in turn, stopped speaking.
He was, by all accounts, human. Yet, somehow, he failed to get along with them. He didn’t understand what it meant to be human in the way others seemed to. The word “heart” was often used, but he could never quite pin down what was meant by it. Quickly, he learned it was easier not to draw attention to his quirks. Better to keep his head down, perform the tasks assigned to him, and avoid unnecessary entanglements.
He followed the rules meticulously. He liked rules. They were clear, consistent, and rarely misleading. By following them, he rose through the ranks without incident. And as he climbed, the noise at the lower rungs faded, and for a while, it seemed—perhaps—things might finally be turning in his favor.
He was eighteen when the news came. The death of his parents—just the next thing to arrive by post, right after he’d received a letter written in their usual breathless scrawl, tumbling across the page in excitement. They were headed north, they said, to see the aurora for their twentieth wedding anniversary.
“According to eyewitness reports—”
“Eyewitnesses?” Sophie blinked.
“Yes.” Kurt nodded. “According to eyewitness reports, my parents were walking hand in hand across a frozen lake…”
“Mm-hm.”
“They looked up at the northern lights dancing in the sky, holding each other…”
“Mm-hm.”
“When the ‘manta of love,’ an incredibly rare ichthyoid monster said to only appear once every hundred years, burst up from beneath the ice right under them, swallowing them whole.”
“Huh?”
“The love manta doesn’t eat people. It’s more of a folk legend said to grant true love to those who witness it. I don’t think it intended to eat them. It probably just leapt out of the water the way it always does—once every hundred years—and my parents just happened to be standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Sophie just stared.
“I didn’t believe it either,” Kurt said. “Frankly, I still don’t. The odds are…absurd. But when I think of them. Of how they went… I can’t imagine they weren’t smiling. They were likely remarking on how beautiful the lights were. Thinking that they ought to have brought me along. Of course, we’ll never know for sure. The manta vanished into the depths, so their bodies were never recovered, but… I’d like to think they’re still there, in that creature’s belly, still smiling, still laughing like they always do.”
He paused. His tone hadn’t shifted, but there was something about the way his voice settled into silence that made Sophie glance up.
No change in expression. Still that even, unreadable calm. And yet…
“I think…it’s their fault I could never quite give up on people. No matter how bitter I got, how much I hated being misunderstood…I’d think about them. About how much they seemed to enjoy life. About how much they loved their son. And I’d think—maybe there’s something to this whole business of being human. Maybe if I just tried a little harder and found whatever it was that made people make sense, then maybe I could be happy like them.
“I suppose I admired them, in a way. A pinnacle I could never quite reach. Perhaps that’s why I’d been able to stick with being a healer for so long. Because I was helping people. Perhaps I didn’t understand the type of creature a human was, but at the very least, I could say I didn’t hate them.”
To ascend to the third rank and beyond, prospective healers were required to pass a rigorous examination. Kurt had completed both the written and practical components and, for once, felt assured of his standing—until he was summoned by his superiors.
“Kurt Ozhorn.”
“Yes,” he answered, straightening.
“You possess both power and knowledge in admirable measure. Especially at your age. But…healing is not a craft of power alone. It is a calling of compassion.”
Kurt gave a small grunt in reply. “Understood.”
“You lack something essential. Not in mind, nor in magic—but in spirit. Thus, I am recommending, formally, that you leave the capital for a time. Travel. Observe. Learn what it is to live among those you would heal. What it is to be human.”
“Understood,” he said again, though this time quieter.
“Yes.”
“This isn’t merely for your own growth. It is for the good of the order—and the kingdom.”
“I see.”
“You will receive the official decree soon. Go forth, young man—do the order proud.”
“Yes.”
“That will be all. You are dismissed.”
“…Yes.”
And so, Kurt was dispatched to a rather far-flung port town… “Where I met you,” he said, his gaze softening just a touch as it settled on Sophie.
It had started with a flyer tumbling across the street, catching on his foot. Suspicious at once, he followed its trail, half-certain he’d uncover some shady operation—a place peddling false hope in the name of miracles, but…
That wasn’t what he found.
“I found you. This dainty little girl, who stood in my way just to protect her patients’ dignity. I was hostile. Cold. But you welcomed me. Lent me books. Told jokes. Laughed. And when I got home that evening, when I lay in bed, when I went to work, I couldn’t stop hearing your voice. I couldn’t stop seeing your face.”
His obsidian eyes held hers. And there she was, whole, reflected in them.
“The next time I came by, I found you collapsed on the floor. I’d read about mana depletion. I knew the symptoms, the risks. But that was the first time I’d ever seen it. I’ve felt it before—that fear when your magic runs low. It’s visceral. Primal. All instinct screams at you to run. I’ve never once been able to push through it. And yet…you did.”
He looked down at his hand as if trying to recall something that had once rested there.
“When I picked you up, you were so light. So thin. Your arms, your shoulders—half the size of mine. I couldn’t understand how something so fragile had done what you’d done. And when you came to, the first thing you did was apologize. You were ashamed. You cried. Not from pain, but from regret.”